Foodie Challenge Featured Winner: My Picnic Lunch

Well, It’s time to announce another of our wonderful Foodie Challenge winners! Today, we are featuring Debra Black’s photo, My Picnic Lunch. She took the photo in Vienna, Austria, which was just one stop during a six-month stint in Europe in 2007.

Read what Debra has to say about the photo and her new outlook on food after the break…

Throughout my trip, it was important for me to experience the daily market culture and seek out as many markets as possible. I was especially excited about Vienna’s Naschmarkt (where the food in this picture was purchased). It was a beautiful August morning in Vienna and I decided to piece together a picnic lunch. I ended up wandering through the market for quite a long time, and I picked up a variety of things. Then I found this great little park nearby where I could sit and eat and watch the local kids enjoy the swings and basically just soak it all in.

In the U.S. – especially L.A. where I live – people just don’t live this way, so for me, experiencing the European culture started with the markets and the food but extended to simply taking the time to sit and enjoy watching how the locals live.

Perhaps the biggest ‘story’ I can tell is not something you can see within the four corners of this photo but how eating this way in Europe changed my life back at home. I now try to live a little more European: buying fresh ingredients, visiting farmers markets as often as I can, making simple fresh food at home, and in general trying to savor the quality of food.

Stayed tuned for more stories and photos from our Foodie Challenge Winners!

Photo via debstah1‘s photo stream on flickr.